VIDA UNIVERSITARIA The+Shoreline%2714+April%2C+2014 | Page 11

I
t is a lazy, warm Sunday morning in NITK. The roads leading up
to the Main Building wear a deserted look. A lone, white car with
a queer antenna attached to the roof is parked some distance away.
A moment later, we enter the SOLVE lab where hushed silence prevails,
broken only by the discreet whirr of sophisticated equipment. We’re
greeted by Professor Gangadharan with a genial smile, all semblance of
formality discarded, replaced instead by a contagious enthusiasm that
makes us forget to notice the time pass by for the next couple of hours.
Professor Gangadharan, you have
been involved with NITK since 1993
and you have seen it go from an REC
to an NIT. What major changes have
you seen during your tenure here?
The first major change that has come is
freedom. Earlier, when it was an REC sys-
tem, we had a University dictating rules. If
you look at your curriculum alone, 2003
to 2005, so many versions were there! By
around 2008 or 2009, we had stabilized on
the syllabus. It gave the students a lot of lei-
sure time also, because the students knew
what to expect. Subjectivity is limited now,
right? The same person sets the syllabus,
takes the classes, sets the questions and
evaluates. This is not the case in a university
system. This freedom has definitely had an
impact on the students. For example, it has
induced students to go for internships out-
side the institute - that was not there earlier
in the university system. We can now give
our students almost three months to pur-
sue an internship. Earlier, our timing was
decided by somebody else!
So how have you used this freedom?
Has it changed your approach in
classes?
Without this freedom, I don’t think I would
give questions with equations. Now my
questions don’t require you to remember
equations. No industry requires you to re-
member equations! Also, suppose I attend
a conference and find something quite new
and interesting, I can now introduce it to the
whole class! Suppose I feel, “Okay, some-
thing new has come up in dynamics.” I don’t
need to worry about whether it is in the syl-
labus or not, because what I teach is my syl-
labus! Of course, there is a framework, but
I have more flexibility. It gave serious teach-
ers and students a lot of opportunity.
You started the SOLVE Lab at
NITK. Could you please tell us
the story, right from the Virtual
Instrumentations Course that you
started at NITK?
I actually started three courses - Finite Ele-
ment Analysis for Mechanical Engineering,
Applied Finite Element Methods, and Vir-
tual Instrumentation - which was a unique
programme. We now offer it as a theory-
cum-practical course. That led to the Center
for System Design, in which the major pro-
ject that came up was the Virtual Lab. The
Center for System Design is looking at an
inter-disciplinary approach to solving any
and every problem. SOLVE (Student On-
line Laboratory through Virtual Experimen-
tation) is one of the projects of the Center
for System Design. There are two models
in this project – a simulation based virtual
lab and a remote triggered virtual lab. Right
now we haven’t released them for public
use, it is still under testing. We are hoping
that by mid-2014 it should be available for
public use. We have plenty of problems
The Shoreline
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